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Fight Breaks Out At Catholic Festival Fights broke out during the annual Feast of the Assumption pilgrimage in Carey Sunday afternoon at the Our Lady of Consolation Shrine. The religious event is supposed to bring thousands of people together to honor the Virgin Mary, which falls on every Aug. 15. The annual event was interuppted after a group, known as the "Minister of Annoyance," told the numerous Catholics in attendance to not believe in God and disown their faith. It sparked a fight between the group and a few teenagers. Carey police were called and arrested three teens and one...

BELFAST, August (LifeSiteNews.com) – After a concerted effort by Christian and pro-family groups to put a stop to Belfast’s annual “Gay Pride” event, on Thursday the Northern Ireland Parades Commission gave the homosexual group the go-ahead to hold the event. The Northern Ireland Police Service requested that the Parades Commission – originally set up to decide on whether parades held by warring Catholics and Protestants be allowed to proceed – rule on the matter, after receiving complaints about the lewd nature of the parade from concerned Christian groups. A Christian coalition, Stop the Parade Coalition, originally complained that the event...

In Pakistan, Catholics, Protestants and Muslims celebrated Saint Anthony of Padua in Lahore’s Sacred Heart Cathedral on June 14. Some 500 people gathered for the solemn mass and the rejoicing. A solemn mass was also held in the churches of Karachi and Multan.In his homily, Fr Andrew Nasari, vicar general for the diocese of Lahore, spoke about Saint Anthony, calling him the “Saint of the poor”. He also explained why he was venerated by people of different faiths.“Saint Anthony does not only listen to the prayers of Catholics and other Christians but also to those of other religions,” Father...

A Jewish scholar says that over the past half-century, Christian churches have been undergoing a remarkable theological revolution in their attitude towards Judaism and their relationship with the Jewish people. Moshe Auman, who served 35 years in Israel's foreign ministry, devoted the last four years of that time largely to extensive study of Jewish-Christian and Israeli-Christian relations. He feels many of the so-called "mainline" Protestant churches have had trouble coming to grips with the rebirth of the Israeli nation over 50 years ago. By looking closely at the Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Lutheran, and Methodist denominations, Auman says, one finds that these...

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) - At least 1.5 million evangelical Protestants rallied in the heart of this city's financial district Thursday, demonstrating their growing clout in the world's largest Roman Catholic country. Brazil's 13th "March for Jesus" began Thursday morning as hundreds of thousands of faithful from several evangelical sects walked more than 1 mile from the University of Sao Paulo's School of Medicine to skyscraper-lined Avenida Paulista. The number hymn-singing marchers swelled and by the time they reached Avenida Paulista the crowd had grown to 2 million, according to the Reborn in Christ Church that organized the event. Sao...

Orthodox Catholics love to praise the new Pope for putting the "smackdown" on heresy. While most would resist the same tight control on doctrine that Pope Benedict exercises, it's time for Protestants to get serious about rank heresy and fraud perpetuated in the church, as well as the disunity that has sprung up in the body of the Christ. Start With the Basics In taking action against out of control clergy, it's important that it be done in a spirit of love but that resolve be firm and action be decisive. The focus of those concerned with liberal clergy has...

Evangelical Protestants pray that the next pope will be in their biblical corner. First, they pray he will be the defender of babies in the womb. In being that defender, he will forcefully speak out against those who murder infants in females’ bodies. And he will state such forthrightly, in no uncertain terms, just as Pope John Paul II held such convictions. Second, evangelicals pray that the next pope will defend the culture of life by opposing euthanasia. That oft soft-pedaled issue cannot afford to be sidelined by both evangelical Protestants and the Vatican; therefore, it is prayed that the...

NPR.org, April 2, 2005 · "Tip O'Neill was correct," says Father Tom Reese, editor in chief of America, the Catholic weekly magazine. "All politics is local... even in the Catholic Church." Reese suggests that instead of focusing on the possible papal candidates as a bookie would look at horses in the starting gate, try to think about the election from the point of view of the electors, the cardinals who cast the votes. "Each cardinal is thinking, how will this candidate go over in my diocese?" Reese says. "If you're from the Third World, you're concerned with people who are...

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (Reuters) -- The United States has demanded that the IRA disband after the guerrilla group's astonishing offer to shoot the killers of a murdered Northern Ireland Catholic man. "It's time for the IRA to go out of business," U.S. special envoy Mitchell Reiss said Wednesday. For the IRA's political ally Sinn Fein, Northern Ireland's biggest Irish nationalist party, the U.S. demand was yet another blow to its democratic credentials. Reiss told BBC radio: "It's time for Sinn Fein to be able to say explicitly, without ambiguity, without ambivalence, that criminality will not be tolerated. "You can't sign...

Eight years ago, a handful of Roman Catholic families in Huntersville, a suburb of Charlotte, N.C., started a new parish. The home of their church, St. Mark, was a bowling alley. Our Lady of the Lanes, as they jokingly called it, was an apt symbol of the scarcity--and supple ingenuity--of Catholics in a region known as the buckle of the Protestant Bible Belt. Soon St. Mark was gaining a family a day. Now its almost 2,800 families hear Mass in a cavernous gymnasium as they await completion of a new church. Among the newcomers is Ben Liuzzo, 54, a financial-services...

Roughly half of America dislike everything George Bush says, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t the President of the United States. This is a point too few people keep in mind. Take, for instance, the example of Stas, a very nice Orthodox man, who read my recent piece on concerning the Muslim reporter who implicitly threatened to kill me and nuke America. He thought the piece excellent except for my statement that the Pope was the head of Christianity: “As for the Pope, 1 billion various protestants and 300 million Orthodox don't follow his words and that's half of Christianity.”...

Protestants in north-eastern Turkmenistan have been threatened for holding services and preaching Christianity, Forum 18 News Service has learned.  "The head of the village administration, the police, the National Security Ministry (NSM) secret police and Muslim clergy in the person of the mullah started to put pressure on them," local believers who wished not to be named told Forum 18. As well as threatening to deport the Protestants from their village if they continue to hold services, local officials threatened to cut off gas and electricity supplies to the family home and withhold pensions, a serious threat in impoverished Turkmenistan.

TATARSTAN (ANS) -- The pastor of a small church in the mainly-Muslim republic of Tatarstan reports he was recently visited and threatened by a security official, ASSIST News Service (ANS) has learned. Felix Corley of Forum 18 News Service writes that Rafis Nabiullin, a Tatar pastor of a small Evangelical church in the town of Aznakayevo in the mainly Muslim-populated republic of Tatarstan, the capital of which is Kazan 800 km. (495 miles) east of Moscow, has complained of threats from a local FSB security service officer to halt the church's activity and drive him out of the town. The...

Here is a list of “religious” members of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. The list is from their website. Some may be surprised to see that their “churches” are officially pro-abort “churches.” The list: Conservative Judaism Rabbinical Assembly United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism Women’s League for Conservative Judaism Episcopal Church The Episcopal Church Ethical Culture Movement American Ethical Union National Service Conference of the American Ethical Union Humanist Judaism Society for Humanistic Judaism Presbyterian Church (USA) Presbyterians Affirming Reproductive Options (PARO) Women’s Ministries Washington Office Reconstructionist Movement Jewish Reconstructionist Federation Reform Judaism Central Conference of American Rabbis North American...

The deepest and darkest joke I’ve heard in a long time goes like this. Osama bin Laden prays to the spirit of Yasser Arafat who then appears before him. “Yasser, please help me understand something,” requests Osama. “We’re both fellow terrorists. You’ve even killed more infidels than I have. Yet you get the Nobel Peace Prize, your funeral is attended by heads of state from around the world, and European newspapers compare you to Moses – while I am the world’s most hunted and hated man, reduced to hiding in inaccessible mountain caves. How did you do it? What is...

...There is no doubt that John Kerry showed great skill at embracing deeply contradictory positions, but that does not make him unusual; all politicians have mastered the art of self-contradiction. What was remarkable in this election is that one candidate, President Bush, never changed: He said what he meant and meant what he said. If the Democrats could not appeal to the moral values of people, that fact must have been lost on the 48% of the voters who supported Sen. Kerry.... I am just as mystified by Mr. Friedman's lament that "Christian fundamentalists" are ruining his America by fostering...

The Church celebrates Reformation Sunday on the last Sunday of October, commemorating a significant event in the history of the Reformed tradition. It was on October 31, 1517, that Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg... Reformation Sunday

Archaeologists in Germany say they may have found a lavatory where Martin Luther launched the Reformation of the Christian church in the 16th Century.The stone room is in a newly-unearthed annex to Luther's house in Wittenberg. Luther is quoted as saying he was "in cloaca", or in the sewer, when he was inspired to argue that salvation is granted because of faith, not deeds. The scholar suffered from constipation and spent many hours in contemplation on the toilet seat. 'Earthy Christianity'The lavatory was built in the period 1516-17, according to Dr Martin Treu, a theologian and Luther expert based in...

To an outsider George W. Bush's political demeanor seems little more than stumbling tautology. He utters his campaign message in clipped phrases, filled with bravado and repeated references to God, and to resoluteness of purpose. But to a trained eye and ear these performances have the deliberate balance of a country singer at the Grand Ole Opry. Speaking in a quasi-rural dialect that his critics dismiss as affected, W is telling his core voting groups that he is one of them. No matter that he is the product of many generations of wealth; that his grandfather was a New England...

September 10, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life says that the relationship between religious affiliation and political views is more complex than at first appears. Evangelical Christians, Mainline Protestants and white Roman Catholics were polled for their opinions on a variety of political issues for Pew's Fourth National Survey of Religion and Politics. In general the results show what pro-life activists have known by experience. What are referred to as 'religious traditionalists,' those who adhere closely to the official teachings of their religions, are more likely to hold similar beliefs between religious...